Hi, I want to buy a new hard drive for my desktop PC, and I was wondering if the western digital black 250GB hard drive or western digital enterprise 250GB hard drive would work better for such a PC. Both of the HDDs I mentioned are SATA, in case you're wondering.

Dear UsersWin Xp is not recognizing 250GB HDD how to make it recognize 250GB HDD and what would be the file system for the partition FAT32 or NTFS (Recognizing means not showing its full size)thanks

Answer:Windows XP Pro and 250GB Western Digital HDD

What do you mean by not recognizing it?The best file system is debatable.I'd recommend NTFS for (supposed) speed benefits over FAT32 and newer features, plus you can use files more than 4Gb in size with it, which you can't with FAT32.Also, I heard Windows XP won't format volumes over a certain size with FAT32, hopefully someone can clarify whether this is right or not.However, NTFS is subject to the "RAW phenomenon". I don't understand this, but I've seen it mentioned, hopefully someone can explain that too.

Am looking at buying an external hard drive to use as a secondary back up device for my music collection etc, while still regularly backing up my important documents on DVDs. I've been looking around and I like the price of the Western Digital My Book 250GB Essential USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (£55 from amazon.co.uk). It's got pretty good reviews and WD is a big name with a decent reputation.

Am only looking to spend around £60 and am not looking for anything massive. Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? Am looking to order the external HDD this weekend.

Just installed new WD 250GB HD in above laptop. Only recognizes 24 GB of 250GB. Used HP recovery disk they sent me. Boots up, I get the desktop, and after 1 minute, tells me it's shutting down, then automatically reboots, and this goes on and on..I can boot in safe mode + networking and can get to internet, etc via wireless. HELP!

Answer:Western Digital laptop 250GB HDD

"HP recovery disk they sent me."Is this disk a complete systems disk or does it restore the system from a backup directory that would be on your old drive? You may have to talk to HP on how the disk works. If it ia a complete systems it should have asked you if you want to format the new drive. Did it and what did you chose?

I have just bought this external drive and am trying to download the driver onto my laptop from the WD website, as I am running Windows 98SE. I have found the WD Essentials USB 2.0 driver and when I click the DOWNLOAD button a small screen appears with a blue line across the top and the words "File Download". However this box just flashes on and off all the time and locks up the computer. The only way to get rid of it is to switch the power off. I have enabled pop-ups as requested, and have also disabled Norton Antivirus 2005. I have no firewall. I have tried a number of times without success. Can you please help? Many thanks.

Answer:Western Digital USB 2.0 250GB external drive

I have just downloaded it without problems, aristo, if you wish I can email it to you, it's a 2MB zip file.

First of all, I would like to offer my congratulation for your definitely helpful forum. Concerning my laptop, I have a Toshiba A100-906. I have upgraded its memory to 3GB and now I would like to upgrade its hard disk as well. I am thinking of buying a *Western Digital Hard which has 250 GB capacity*. I am wondering, what is the maximum hard disk size for this laptop and if it supports the hard disk which mentioned above.

Thanks in advance
Stl from Greece

Answer:Satellite A100-906 and Western Digital 250GB

Hi

Well?not easy to say if a 250GB HDD would be recognized by BIOS because Toshiba doesn?t provide any details about max possible HDD size.

Fact is that a BIOS doesn?t support all HDD sizes due to some limitations.

But in my opinion it?s not possible to use the 250GB HDD. I think it?s simply too large.
However, this is only my suggestion and maybe you should test it to ensure if it?s possible or not.

I used Norton Ghost to image my 60gb on to a WD 250gb in the removable bay trey. The 250 appears to work normally as drive d:. But it will not finish booting when installed as the c: drive Windows XP Pro boots thru the logo on a black screen to to a Windows dark/light blue screen with a small Windows logo. The Sign on prompt never appears. Cursor is present and works. Same thing occurs in Safe Mode. Work fine when I swap the 60gb back in. Any ideas?

Solved!

Go to Solution.

Answer:250gb Western Digital in R40 will not finish booting

Hi rddavis, Welcome to the Lenovo forum. I think this thread will help you out. (Basically, repeat your cloning procedure, but this time boot from CD, and clone from the removable bay tray to the new drive installed in regular drive bay (C: ).) Good luck,-FrankMessage Edited by fmyhr on 2009-07-17 10:04 PM

I have been using this USB drive for some time. I have it divided in to three seperate partitions, but recently (and this is the second time this has happened) XP will no longer detect the already existing partitions on the drive. I am able to see the drive in device manager, it shows up as a WD 2500JB External USB Device, as well as in the manage option when right clicking My Computer. However in the manage window it shows the whole drive as unallocated space. I know that there are files on there, (several GB's of customer backups.) it was there just yesterday. Any ideas on how to get Xp to pull it's head out and see these partitions?

This is not a repeat! It's just that I read somewhere about one needs to make sure that it is formatted to NTFS. My Windows XP Sp2 is formatted to NTFS so will this present no problem when I come to use the drive?

I didn't do the math, but that sounds about right. There is a difference in the size the manufacturere advertises, and the actual reported size once the disc is installed on the system. Manufactures report the size as 1billion bytes=1GB, where your computer uses 1024MB=1GB. Manufactures also round up sometimes to make the size even out and make it look more desirable. an example would be a drive with 123billion bytes capacity might be sold as a 125GB or 128GB because it looks better on paper. I believe that tactic is mostly used by lesser brands, but I'm not completely sure if some of the major makers may use it as well.

The "Technical Specification" provides plenty of info but does not specify the actual current. All it says is that it is powered directly from the USB port. But I need to know exactly what the peak ma of this device is.

My current Samsung Spinpoint is reaching it's end of life and I dearly need to replace it.However what is the most prudent choice for this oldie ? Do I get myself a Seagate Desktop SSHD 1 TB (solid state hybride drive) or a WD Re - 1 TB drive.Remember I just need to replace the main drive for the Server OS, the Hypervisor and the applications on this basic Windows 2008 R2 Server which is used as our office server and developer server for php web applications. Yours truly,

OK, I hope you guys can give me some advice here. Just installed my new WD Black Caviar 1TB.What I would like to know is how to configure now? I currently have 3 Hard drives. 1 x 320gb Seagate Baracuda, 1 x 320gb WD, and then the 1TB drive. Currently I have three OS set up. Windows 7 7100 64bit, 7127 64bit, and 7100 Chinese 32bit. These are all on my Seagate HD. My data and everything else is on the 320gb WD.Obviously the 1TB drive is the fastest, so I would like to utilize it fully. Should I move my default OS here? Should I partition it first? Or should I keep my data on this?Any help and advice will be greatly appreciated.Thanks!!

Answer:Western Digital Black Caviar 1TB

What I usally do is this, and for the record I just bought that same drive from newegg for $90.00 so im stoked for its arrival!

First I always partition the drive in 2

Give your first partition something like 400 gigs and the d partition 600 I only install OS and Apps to the C drive all DATA, Images, saves, documents, pictures,music reside on D

so when I reformat I dont lose my data just the apps and its a much faster re-install.

I also leave in a secondary Drive or an external drive and use that for backups of the D important data so if one drive dies your set.

I don't do any mirror because of costs, and speed issues (no im not setting up raid 0, or 5 on a home PC) my method works and is cheap done multiple recoveries this way.

Always do a fresh install never upgrade over something if possible!

When installing new devices remove all refrences to old devices PRIOR to installing new hardware.

Thats all I can tell you. Been living by this for years and no problems since.

I just ordered this drive from TD, and I got to wondering if there is anything that I need to do different for it to be able to use the full capacity of the drive? I will probably partition the first 100GBs for adding another OS to my secondary rig, and the remainder in multiple partitions for archiving data.

Answer:Western Digital 1TB Black Caviar

There isn't anything special that you should have to do. As long as it your box recognizes the drive, you should get all of the capacity. A 1TB drive will show up as 931GB to Windows 7.

Just received this drive today. Previously using a WD 320 SATA 2 drive which works perfectly. Wanted to use the new drive being it has a 32 bit buffer but having problems. I cannot complete any install with Vista because it is always looking for drivers. Motherboard is a KSI K9A2 CF. Tried everything I can think of but really like to use this drive as a boot drive.. The drive partitions and formats without a problem, just will not let you use it as a boot drive. Any ideas..

Answer:New Western Digital Cavair Black

Originally Posted by markst

Just received this drive today. Previously using a WD 320 SATA 2 drive which works perfectly. Wanted to use the new drive being it has a 32 bit buffer but having problems. I cannot complete any install with Vista because it is always looking for drivers. Motherboard is a KSI K9A2 CF. Tried everything I can think of but really like to use this drive as a boot drive.. The drive partitions and formats without a problem, just will not let you use it as a boot drive. Any ideas..

If you're saying/thinking that Vista is looking for drivers for that hard drive, that's not the case as it's not a requirement. Unless the hard drive is bad or damaged, your issues lay elsewhere.

- Check that the SATA cable is correctly hooked up, same for power connections.- Check that the hard drive is connected to the correct SATA ports and that the ports are properly configured through the BIOS.

What Vista "might" be looking for are the MB's SATA/RAID drivers.

Are you using RAID? Is the SATA port the HD is on set to RAID? Again, check the BIOS settings. Unless you?re using RAID, you should be set to IDE/SATA. Check your manual though.

And for your reference, I just moved from 4 WD 320gig HD's to two 500Gig Caviar Blacks. One containing Vista Ultimate x64, the other containing Windows 7 x64. No special required to install the OS.

Yesterday I was using Defraggler from piriform to do a defrag, and I suddenly got a Disk Health: bad, and checked SMART, and all was 0, all SMART attributes was with error and bad, temperature was 0? (of course incorrect) a new disk with about 1 year and half, then I canceled the defrag and only have done a chkdsk (just chkdsk) on restart, then it took too much time, but at this time when I opened Defraggler, and I checked the Disk Health: good, also all SMART attributes was right.

It was a bug?

I think so because I was running Norton 360 Scheduled malware search and Defraggler simultaneously.

Then I put the WD diagnostic tool running, and done a quick test and extended test and I got all tests OK and passed.

Well, I let you 7 screenshots and please analyze this and say me if all is ok, and if all SMART attributes are there and OK or is someone attribute missing, or I should take it to warranty.

Defraggler:

http://gyazo.com/78937a5bc2f33ecc6ffb120cf58918ac.png

http://gyazo.com/2d5edfd7ecd060ebb389ecc533787733.png

Speccy:

http://gyazo.com/8c53fc81cf0dde9248f3fe822b2b68ff.png

http://gyazo.com/58ac447cdba7f2a045d24cccf1cfaf6e.png

WD Diagnost tool:

http://gyazo.com/97808d7c7dd9581129a089eefbcd2426.png

HD Sentinel:

http://gyazo.com/66148ffd5a76e07f5fb2dee84bf4e42c.png

http://gyazo.com/6c751bf0385fbe4a987be3e50e4a776a.png

Thank you.

Answer:Western Digital Black WD1002FAEX Health bad

While Defraggler worked great in XP and was superior to XP's native defragger, I've found that it doesn't play well with Win 7 and caused far more problems than it corrected. It also was as slow as a dead turtle with four broken legs. Win 7's native defragger works much, much better than Defraggler and it's all I use now. I have it set on my computer to automatically defrag my HDDs (SSDs should never be defragged) every Wednesday during the wee hours (when I'm normally sawing logs). I check to see how fragmented my drives are every once in a blue moon and they are almost always at 0% (once in a while one of them may get up to a whopping 1%).

To get to Win 7's defragger, just hit the Windows key and type "defrag" (without the quotes).

ok, my hard drive is a caviar black 1tb, (WD1001FALS) , its like less than one and a half years old ,today my coomputer started freezing momentarily, i tested the hard drive and turns out it has some bad sectors...HD tune benchmark fails, WD Diagnostics utility fails during diagnostics...: heres screenshots of HD Tune:

so how can i fix this? i did some googling, turns out that the drives controller shouldve done it automatically and transparently ....well it didnt, so what do i do?

Answer:Bad sector on Western Digital Caviar Black

Time for a new drive. I've been where you are now. There are times when diagnostics can fix certain sector issues, but like you I have had to get a replacement because it was beyond the drive's controller to rectify the problem.

Would like to know how dependable this drive is that I just bought today (before formatting/partitioning/data transfer)

WD Caviar Black 1tb, 32mb, 7200 rpm (for file backups) Hear this is among the most dependable among the WD/Hitachi/Seagate gang. And what about the Samsung Raid class 1tb, 7200 rpm sata -- how does this rate in reality -- does the fact that it is 'raid class' really matter? I've learned not to take anything that's stamped on the box at face value.

From what I know the WD Caviar is pretty well established. Meaning the drive doesn't go undectable all at once, but rather fails gradually when it does, so there is usually at least some lead time/for replacing. At the same time have heard the 'green' drives by WD aren't that great.

Am too thinking about the 500gb WD Caviar Black for the primary drive.

Replacing: multiple 7200.11 Barracuda 1 tb's and 500mg's. Would strongly advise staying away from these drives. They are defective with very high fail rates. They simply go undetectable one day and that's it. Notived that a class action suit was being organized against them for various reasons on this drive.

Answer:Western Digital Caviar Black 1tb sata

I have a couple of 1TB Greens in external enclosures.I like them because they run cooler and my externals don't have good cooling ... And I don't run them all the time.

I'm using 640GB Blacks in my Tower.Their supposed to be better because of the double Disc Bearings .. and have a 5 year warranty.I've heard that if the disc support gets sloppy .. It has trouble reading the disc.

My 640 backs are just a little noisy as compared to my older 320s ... The double platters are not balanced perfectly.

I recently built my first rig with a Samsung SSD and a Western Digital HDD. The OS is on the SSD, and the WD will be used for storage.

The problem is that both Windows and Disk Management do not recognize the drive. My Bios reads it just fine, however.

This is merely a recent development - last night, the disk could be found in Disk Management, but the problem arose when it started to randomly disappear during formatting. I shut down the computer and attempted to switch the SATA ports hoping that would help, but I wound up creating more problems for myself.

Now I've got the computer back in the same configuration it was in when I attempted to first format the HDD, and it's not showing up in Disk Management or Windows. As I said, the bios is able to read it just fine.

This is the second HDD I've attempted to install. The previous one just stopped during formatting and failed a number of diagnostics. I bought this most recent one and I'm having the current set of problems with it. Last night it was recognized both in Disk Management and the Western Digital diagnostics software, passing just fine. The problems all began when the disk began disappearing during formatting. Now I can't see it anywhere except the bios and post screen.

I'm this close to just reinstalling Windows and leaving the drive connected to see if I can format it during installation.

This build will be for my 77 year old mother who lives in another state and I am trying to build this as stable and problem free preventative mode as best as I can with the understanding that any hardware can fail at any time.

Anyway, NewEgg is having both their Blue and Black WD 1TB hard drives on sale that goes off of sale after tomorrow. I know Black is often the choice due to build quality and 5 year warranty. However, the Blue would really help budget wise because every dollar counts and it sees many people have had good success with the Blue.

She does MS Office, email, surfing plus she has an online business that keeps her very busy along with uploading a lot of photos.

Not sure but here all HDD are listed as 7mm. You may want to check again, whats inside your laptop.Here's the manual and the list of HDD is on Page 91 -http://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/lenovo_y40_50_series_hmm.pdf

Yesterday I was using Defraggler from piriform to do a defrag, and I suddenly got a Disk Health: bad, and checked SMART, and all was 0, all SMART attributes was with error and bad, temperature was 0º (of course incorrect) a new disk with about 1 year and half, then I canceled the defrag and only have done a chkdsk (just chkdsk) on restart, then it took too much time, but at this time when I opened Defraggler, and I checked the Disk Health: good, also all SMART attributes was right.

It was a bug?

I think so because I was running Norton 360 Scheduled malware search and Defraggler simultaneously.

Then I put the WD diagnostic tool running, and done a quick test and extended test and I got all tests OK and passed.

Well, I let you 7 screenshots and please analyze this and say me if all is ok, and if all SMART attributes are there and OK or is someone attribute missing, or I should take it to warranty.

Defraggler:

http://gyazo.com/78937a5bc2f33ecc6ffb120cf58918ac.png

http://gyazo.com/2d5edfd7ecd060ebb389ecc533787733.png

Speccy:

http://gyazo.com/8c53fc81cf0dde9248f3fe822b2b68ff.png

http://gyazo.com/58ac447cdba7f2a045d24cccf1cfaf6e.png

WD Diagnost tool:

http://gyazo.com/97808d7c7dd9581129a089eefbcd2426.png

HD Sentinel:

http://gyazo.com/66148ffd5a76e07f5fb2dee84bf4e42c.png

http://gyazo.com/6c751bf0385fbe4a987be3e50e4a776a.png

Thank you.

Answer:Western Digital Black WD1002FAEX Health bad

If everything is passing then it may have been a glitch in the software and it just lost it's ability to talk to the drive.

So, I decided to run some maintenance checks on my hard drives today. All my other drives are perfect, no dead sectors, still running cool, good read/write.I have one of the Caviar Blacks dedicated to just Media. It's getting towards the full side, I only have 300GB free anymore. But that's not the problem, apparently I've acquired a couple dead sectors in this drive.There's no operating system, it's simply an internal drive used for Media.

Is there any way to repair this? I don't have enough free space anywhere else to back up all this media. And I don't want any of it getting corrupted or lost.

Run the manufacturer's diagnostics on the run and get a their result, also the WD diagnostics offer an option to repair the drive - you may have to run the CD version of the diagnostics to be offered the repair though. Or if the drive fails then you can use the error code to have the drive replaced under the 3 or 5 year warranty.

For a while now, I've been curious to know what the differences are in the Western Digital Caviar Series.
So far as I know, Black is high performance, Green is eco-friendly and slow, but I'm not sure what the Blue series has to offer, other than a lower price tag.
Can anyone clearify what the techinical differences are between Black and Blue? For high performace reasons, I bought the Black series for my tower, but what would I have been missing out on had I gone for the Blue series?

Thanks in advance.

Answer:Western Digital hard drives: The differences between Black and Blue Series

In theory, the Black is supposed to be the faster drive. In actuality, there isn't much between them. Speed rather depends on platter size and cache - The Black drives are either 32 or 64Mb cache, while the Blue drives top out at 32Mb.
Black drives carry a five year warranty, while Blue drives are three years which is probably of more significance.

I have this hard drive that came from an external drive case. It had been corrupted I guess and repaired (I thought) with checkdisk, My computer spent 11 days fixing it. The drive spent a year of the shelf and I just tried installing it as a secondary drive to my computer. The drive showed up and the data while still corrupt was there. When I attempted to reformat the drive it gave me an error(sorry I don't remember what the error said.) and the drive itself vanished from Disk Management. It shows up in the boot setup menu as Unknown. Is there anything I can do to salvage this drive or is it gone for good?

I'm in the market for a new hard drive and this year I don't know what to go for. Normally, I go for Caviar Black and everything's good. This year though, with the floods in southeast Asia, the rising prices, and the drop in quality, I am not sure what to do.

I am currently looking at 1-2 TB WD Caviar Blacks, but they do seem to have a higher than usual failure rate according to Newegg reviews.

i just need someone to clear things up for me. I want to put this hard drive into my PS3 but I don't know the difference between av 25 and regular hard drive. I know this hard drive does work with PlayStation three but I also know that this hard drive is not supposed be turned on and off all the time because it's made for streaming media. And I might have to format it and fat 32 with a third-party program but I Artie have that so that's not a problem.I am wondering since it's designed to stay on all the time would it make any difference to the hard drive for me to turn on and off every couple hours my PS3 because it takes up a lot of power and I don't want to have it running all the time. here is a link to the hard drive is at newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136561

And on another note I wanted to get this hard drive because it has 30 mb of cache and no other drive that is 500 Gbytes at 5400 RPM 2.5 inch form factor has 30 MB cache so that's why I wanted to get this one. But one of the things is I don't really know the difference from 8 to 30 Mb cache all I know it is supposed to have some type of performance boost without boosting up the RPMs that the drive runs at so it won't have more heat. Because I'm trying to avoid overheating my PS3 which reports state a 7200 RPM drive can overheat the PS3 and give it the yellow light death meaning it melted the solder off the board.

got it just because just needed format as for the drive well see how long it last but it does work. i still want to know what the difference is i mean is it just really titled differently to attract certain customers.

Looking to upgrade. This is almost the same as the current hard drive in there, but it's a faster model. Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 500 GB SATA II 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM 2.5 Inch Mobile Hard drive - WD5000BPKT I'm almost positive this will work, but I just thought I'd double check before I order it. Thanks.

I will be building a new computer in the next few days and will be selling my old one. Before I get rid of it I want to remove everything from it to the best of my ability. My question is.... If I use WD's app to write zero's to my H/D how many times will I have to use it in order to zap all info? I also want whoever buys my box to be able to install a O/S which shouldn't be affected as that's done by changing the boot-up in the bios anyway ( boot from cd )... right or wrong?

I'm going to buy a 250gb external drive this week to back up my hard drive. I'm using my bestbuy card, and seagate and western digital are the brands they carry.

I tried to find customer reviews on the web of the two manufacturers and couldn't really find a consensus on which is more reliable and less prone to malfunction. I would appreciate any input some of you experts have had with these two drives.

I have a chance to buy either one or both of these:1. Western Digital External Hard Drive WDC-WD2000JB-34EVA8, 200GB, with usb cable, power supply, already formatted.2. WD ext HD WDC-WD2500JB-00GVA8, 250GB, also formatted w cable, power supply.What do you know about these items and have you any comments about their functionality and reliability?

I have Vista Business and plan to use the drive to 1. store backups of my files and 2. to protect my pc by having a "mirror" of the hard drive on the external drive. By the way, I have no idea how to do all this, but I understand Vista has a fairly good method. I just need to learn how. I am not looking for help on that, with this thread, however. Thanks.Mike

Help following a unsuccessful ghost image, restore attempt on my dell laptop harddrive running (XP) my WD160Gb drive now only reads 55Gb capacity!, Cannot seem to figure out how to restore to full capacity. Any idea's, Thanks paul

After major problems with WD 3TB external drive, I returned it to Best Buy and bought a Seagate 3TB unit.I'm now attempting to remove all the WD software from my system. I haven't found an "uninstall" optionso I tried deleting the folder. I get msgs that certain .dll's can't be removed for various reasons ie: "currently in use","access denied", although I was able to delete one while in safe mode, but another I couldn't. I'm logged in as admin, so that's not the problem.I can't use RESTORE since that software has been on my computer for about two years.There are a load of file associated to the WD drive and I would love to clean them out.

Answer:Solved: Can't delete Western Digital software

I think the questions are:

1. What was the drive used for2. What was the model of 3TB drive3. Currently in use - depending on what it was used for and how that use was commissioned I would try booting into the system admin account4. I really wonder, if it is worthwhile in any case, I suspect you may cause more problems than you will solve, there are in my opinion many considerations, not least of which, MAY be the effect on the registry.5. I would certainly back up the registry using ERUNT for exmaple AND create a restore point before you think of proceedingI see a real risk of this going pear shaped.

I purchased a Western Digital IDE/ATA hard drive from an auction site(model: WD400EB)as a second drive for backup purposes. It was delivered without a jumper. In looking at the WD install help sites the illustrated "jumper shunt' looks larger than the jumper on my originally installed Seagate drive. Western Digital gives no part # or actual size for the jumper.

Can anyone tell me what type of jumper WD uses and where I can possibly buy them. I should mention the drive is a used one so I have no access to WD's online help.

I purchased 160GB EIDE Western Digital Hard Drive to replace my existing hard drive on my Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop. I've tried to clone it in an external enclosure via usb using the Acronis software that was offered on the WD site but Acronis didn't see the drive though the drive was visible in My Computer. I kept getting the message from the Acronis software that at least one WD hard drive must be in my computer in order to use the software. I contacted WD tech support and got this crazy response:

<I truly do apologize for the inconvenience but in order to use Acronis TI-WD you must have both internal HDs connected at the same time on the inside of your laptop. Acronis TI-WD wont work if the HD is connected via an external enclosures or RAID a setup.>

My question is how am I supposed to do this if there's only one hard drive bay and I wouldn't be able to use the cd bay since I'll need that to use the Acronis boot cd to clone the drive? Anyone have any solutions or do I need to forget upgrading the hard drive and just return it back to Dell? Thanks for any help with this neverending problem.

Just bought myself a supa dupa all singing and all dancing HP PC capable of reaching the moon only to find that my WD external HDD (with ALL my backups!!) isn't recognized when I plug it in!

Done everything....... looked under DEVICE MANAGER = nothing, COMPUTER MANAGEMENT = Nothing, Explorer = Nothing, rebooted with/without the drive connected = Nothing, pulled the crappy cable in and out a thousand times = Nothing ..................................... From looking everywhere via Google this appears a MAJOR problem that a few thousand others who also thought the WD stuff would run on Win 8.

Any ideas appreciated as close to throat slitting time!

Answer:Solved: Can't get Western Digital external HDD to connect to Win 8

I probably can't help, but a couple basic questions ...

Model of the external drive?

Is it self powered? If not, does it require two USB connections or a USB 3.0 port?

Help please, Recently I have been having a problem opening files. When I click to open a file, from most any place, I get the following error box:WD Context Menuhandler.Failed to locate file-C\Program Files\Western Digital\WD smartware\\Locale\wdsmartware.tmx.

I can get out of the box by clicking ENT which then takes me to the file I was trying to open. But, should I try to delete said file I get the same error box and must go through the same procedure .

I do use WD as my back up drive but it is presently disconnected.

Any help will be appreciated.Thanks in advance,JimI tried to copy my sysinfo but I don't see a paste logo.

Thank you for the help last time with my 80 gb external drive. This time is a little different, as it's my two-year-old 500 gb external drive acting up. I unplugged it last night and then plugged it back in a minute later, but it didn't detect. I then turned off the computer. Today, it still won't detect. The power light is on within the external drive. There is no sound made when I plug in the drive to any USB port of my notebook, and the drive isn't shown under either My Computer or Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management. From other research, I would try to "Import Foreign Disk" but don't see that option.

Please help. Thanks.

Answer:Solved: Nonresponsive 500 gb Western Digital hard drive

For anyone curious, today--approximately 36 hours after it stopped working--the drive is working fine in its usual port. I'm marking this thread as solved, but any tips for next time would be appreciated.

I am attempting to install a 20 gig WD HD into an older AMD K62-500 machine running Win98se. I have attempted on multiple occasions to format using a win98 bootdisk. FDISK will not work, and gives me the no physical disk found error. The WD overlay software proceeds fine, tells me the drive is formatted and to reboot. When I reboot I get a DISK BOOT FAILURE message. The system is running the Award 4.51 bios with VIA Apollo VP4 chipset (2A5LHH0CC-00). I thought about flashing the bios, but I'm not to that point yet, I don't think. Also, I've tried changing the CMOS settings, but nothing has worked yet. Any suggestions? Thx, Koala72

Answer:Solved: Western Digital 20gig HD install problems

I would ditch the WD overlay software, you shouldn't need it - that motherboard ought to recognise a 20GB hard disk by itself. Make sure the drive is set to use LBA in the CMOS setup.

Is it not a good idea to leave it on with my computer all the time? I've heard mixed comments on this. My computer is on about 17 hours a day, and it gets shut off at night most of the time. Any advice would be appreciated.

On this page is a picture that looks just like the Back up Drive I had gotten a couple of years ago.

I am very computer illiterate, but my computer repair man back then had told me to buy it. I lost the stuff that hooks to it to make it work.

If I went to a computer shop, would I be able to buy just the stuff (cord, etc) that goes with it? and how can I find out what I would need to buy?

My computer seems to be about to conk out on me and I need this perhaps right away.

Thanks,Claudia

Answer:Solved: Western Digital Portable Backup System

All you need for that drive is the correct USB cable, any local store would have one; just take the drive with you to get the right one as there are different ends for the back of the drive. The USB 3.0 drive you linked too is unlikely to the be the same one as you bought several years ago, yours is likely a USB 2.0 drive with a USB Mini connector like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812226055

Also, having a backup drive and not using is a bad approach. The purpose of a backup is have it current and to use it as you use the computer and before the computer fails. In many cases you do not get any warnings when your hard drive will fail and you will lose everything.

I just bought a western digital 160GB hard drive to replace the one in my firewire case. The drive works fine but is only recognized as being 137GB.I'm not sure why it is not seeing all of the drive. Anyone have any ideas.

Thank you for the help some time ago with my 80 gb external drive. This time is a little different, as it's my two-and-a-half-year-old 500 gb external drive acting up. I unplugged it normally from my computer about 68 hours ago and then plugged it back in a few minutes later, but it didn't detect. I have since turned off the computer. As of now, it still won't detect. The power light is on within the external drive. There is no sound made when I plug in the drive to any USB port of my notebook, and the drive isn't shown under either My Computer or Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management. From other research, I would try to "Import Foreign Disk" but don't see that option.

Last time this happened (July), it started working again about 36 hours later, but it's already been almost twice that.

I use a Dell XPS with Windows XP Media Center, Version 2002 Service Pack 3. I have a Western Digital MyBook Premium Edition 500GB External Hard Drive. It looks like this: http://reviews.cnet.com/hard-drives/western-digital-mybook-premium/4505-3186_7-31793438.html

Well the problem is that its supposed to be 500gbs or space. My pc only shows 232gb of harddrive space on My Computer and that its a FAT32 file system. The only thing I've done was plug it in and put doc, music, vid files in it, nothing else but that. At the time I didnt know if that was normal or not so I didnt do anything about it, but now that I've become more computer smart, I see that theres something up. Is there a way to get the other 200+gbs working from the external harddrive w/o losing my files that are already on it?

I did the My Computer>Properties>Volume, clicked on Populate and heres what I got:

HiI'm new to this forum, and I'm hoping somebody can help me out.I am trying to download a version of Acronis True Image from here:http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&type=download&wdc_lang=enMy cable connection is working fine, and it's a very fast connection, but the download just hangs at a certain point, and never completes.Can somebody help me out by trying to download it from the same place to see if there's a problem?I would appreciate it.

Answer:Solved: Trying to download True Image from Western Digital site

My Sony Vaio had some problems so I want to backup all the files onto this 500gb external harddrive. Only problem is that I couldn't get it to work. Says that theres an error. I decided to try with just 1 file that was 1gb and it worked fine, so I'm in need of some advice on what the problem could be. Its a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition, 500gb harddrive (465.16gb when viewed in Manage), FAT32, has no partitions.

any one return a western digital hard drive to them by mail i was wondering if anyone knows if i send the box with the drive or just the drive it self sorry if this is the wrong place to post thanks for any help

I purchased a western digital (my book essential 500 gb) a few months ago. It worked fine. All of a sudden the computer does not recognize it. It used to show as removable G drive. Now nothing. I cannot find the disc that it came with. I also get a message about the usb 2.0 root hub device in device manager. It has a yellow exclamation mark. It says I need to reinstall the driver. But have no disc. Are the two problems related? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer:Western Digital

Refresh USB PortsUse Drive clean up to remove USB device drive info from the registryclick hereorIn device manager Uninstall EVERYTHING under the heading USB, reboot the PC let XP find and install new hardware.Your equipment should now be recognised.

I have a 500GB wester digital hard drive. I had backed up my pc before reformatting. I then bought a new pc. I want to get all my vidz, music and pics off it, But there arent a lot of file in it. It says that 202GB of 465G is free , but the files+folders in the hard drive only add up to 4.57gb. I realy need these files as they are my last and only back up. Is there a way to get to it or get them off. please help, or my family will kill me, I had about 14000 photos on there.

Hi , I am trying too reformat my WD hard drive to ntfs it is currently fat32 but i keep getting access denied , i think it is about allowing permissions could anyone tell me how to do this on my vista ultimate 64 bit PC , thanks for any help.

Hey guys just wondering i have two western digital hard drives they are both "Black" type and i was wondering can you put to of them in one computer or can u only have One "Black" and one "Green" i recently bought the new hard drive which was a 1TB Western Digital Black Caviar Hard Drive, the one i had was a 80Gb Western Digital black Caviar and everytime i put them both in it says something along the lines of "Kernal Error" it was secondary and im using the 1TB as primary.

I've been a loyal WD customer since 2002, but lately I have lost confidence in their drives.

First drive to fail:

WD800. Bought in 2003 brand new, used in a athlon xp machine every day for a year. when i built my amd64 machine it was only used from time to time. The tower was never pushed over, kicked, etc.

When the drive turns on it spins up then ticks off immediately. it will do this about 5-6 times before it just stays off.

This drive had important pictures on it that i may not have back-ups of.

Second drive to fail:

almost a month later, the WD 80gig from my dads dell 8200 crashed and would not allow windows to be re-installed.

it was quickly replaced by a WD 320gig drive.

i brought the dell 80 gig back to life somehow as a storage drive.

Third drive to fail

WD 200gig

bought new in 2004 for my athlon 64 system. was never abused or swapped out. Last week it pooped out and no computer/ external enclosure i put it in will recognize it. I tried taking the dell 80 gig and installing windows on it for my new pc, now it is doing the same thing.

After this I will no longer buy WD drives, seems like they have a 3-5 year lifespan which is ridiculous.

I have a hitachi 250gig drive in an external enclosure that i bought in 2003 also which has been dropped, knocked over, kicked, punted (accidentally of course) and it still works fine.

I have a maxtor 2 gig drive which is useless for xp but it still works perfect.

WHY did I get a 1.5TB for Christmas???? I thought it would be awesome (and it is) but now I just lost out on 500GB Ah well, at $300 for a 2TB drive, I'd rather get 2 <$150 1.5's and have 3GB instead of 2

...and why Australia? That's dumb. It's an AMERICAN company, WE should get them first >: (

I have a question. As all you techies probably know, when you turn on a pc that has an external western digital HDD connected to it, the HDD turns on and off with the computer. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Reason being, I only back up to it seldom, and I often play loud music; I don't want my HDD on all the time when my computer is on. Is there some kind of workaround vs turning off the HDD right after it turns on with the PC every single time? (It's probably causing wear and tear when I do that).

Hey guys, I've looked all over the net but have come to a dead end and thought i would ask you lot.

I've just bought a 200GB Western Digital HD, but for some reason the computer doesn't register it at all. I've got a Abit KR7A Mobo, i tryed plugging the harddrive directly into the mobo and it dosnt see it at all. I got a Raid card which uses Silicon Image drivers, I updated the drivers for that but that dosnt see the harddrive as well.

Dose it mean i will have to update the Bios? Or is it windows?

Thanks for your help!.

Answer:Western Digital

I assume this is an internal HD.
Try connecting it to one of your standard ATA-100 IDE-cables first.
If there is already a HD or CD on it, set the new HD to slave.
If this is the first drive on an empty IDE, set it to Master.

In your BIOS set the corresponding IDE-connection to Automatic
(Primary ID Master or Slave, or Secondary ID Master or Slave)

All tech specs and settings can be found here:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=38

alright heres my problem i just bought a western digital HDD and installed it on my pc running server 2003 the problem is it does not show up under windows explorer. it shows up fine in the device manager but i cannot access it through my computer

any ideas???

thx

Answer:Western Digital

Did you try going to Disk Management and partitioning and formatting it?

I have a mybook 320gb drive. I use it stricktley for backup. Now the power won't come on and the world wants 600.00 beans for data recovery. You can't open these puppies cause they are laser sealed.I ran my own little check on it. I used to be an electronics tech in a different field. Here's the deal. When the firewire is plugged in and the power cord is too there is no recognition. I plug in a usb cable and it recognizes "blank Oxford drive". If I unplug it the hardware goes away. The power button is fried I think... Have you ever had these issues thrown out to you? I really don't care about the warrenty but I want opinions before I crack this casing open...

Thanks,Christopher

Answer:Western Digital got me down :(

The box should just have a regular ATA drive inside it, there should be no worry about opening the case if warranty is not an issue. Once you have the drive out you can try installing it internally inside your computer or another USB enclosure.

I doubt its the power button if the unit does get detected through a USB connection, its hopefully the electronics in the enclosure.

P.S. If the drive contains the only copy of data then it is NOT a backup. One copy is never a backup, its a disaster in waiting, or one that has already happened.

I have an hp 535 pavillon. I recently installed a 250 GB Western digital hard drive. The ORIGANIAL hard drive was a 40 GB Western digital. I installed it in the other bay and used Norton Ghost to clone it. everything is fine except I can not change the drive letter or get my pc to boot off the new drive. Help!

Not sure if this is a hardware or software so i decided to go here... is there a software patch that i can use that will change the firmware on the controller of the western digital elements drive to keep it spinning constantly while windows is loaded or is that not even possible? i hate the slow load times and it skips when i play music too sometimes...

Thanks

Derek

Answer:western digital 500 gb elements

You could try to enable write caching in Windows but will need to use the safely remove hardware option to disconnect the drive.http://files.myopera.com/Bugballou/albums/280650/WD 5000KS.jpg

So I have spent a very long time trying to figure out why Windows Vista will not recognize my HD during installation. I am using a 250gig Western Digital 2nd Gen Serial ATA Caviar SE - 7200 RPM drive, model number WD2500JS. The BIOS recognizes the drive, and what is odd is that once in a working Vista environment, Vista recognizes the drive, but yet does not during installation.

I have tryed to have the drivers available on a floppy disk during installation, Vista will recognize the drivers and attempt to install them, but yet still no luck in seeing an active drive to install to.

I have updated my BIOS settings.

I have used different cable connectors and SATA slots.

I have no idea. Is this hard drive not compatable to install Vista? I just don't understand why Vista will see the drive once loaded on a standard EIDE drive, but cannot install to it. Please help me.

Is there some way to check for bad sectors even though it will not start up at all, just keeps rebooting, dump physical memory and reboots again?

I am running XP Pro.

Thanks and Have a Great Day

Answer:Western Digital HD with XP dead?

First thing I would do is take the hard drive out and attach it to the secondary channel of a working pc to salvage data. Once you have the data safely backed up, you can out it back, download and run WD diagnostics to rule out drive failure.

Whats the Western Digital HardDrive Format program. Its a Western Digital Caviar 20.5 Gb WD205AA-OOANAO. I only have MAxblast which doesn't work on the drives and not sure what Western Digital program is.

This is the most aggravating thing in the world .. I can't eject my USB WD External Drive from my Windows 7 Laptop .. I don't have an issue at all when it's connected to my Windows XP desktop computer. It releases immediately. Also, absolutely NO ISSUE when using Flash Drives, they eject fine.

The drive is a USB Western Digital External Hard Drive that I use to save things I receive from the Groups I'm in to keep the clutter off my Laptop.

Whenever I try to eject via the Safely Remove Icon or go to the Open Devices and Printer and physically find the External Drive and select EJECT I get the same generic message that tells me this drive CAN NOT be closed as another program is using it.

DUH !! I'm sure it's a windows process but I can not locate what could possibly be holding onto the External Drive.

I've opened TaskManager and NO PROGRAMS open that could be using it. Looked at the Process's Running NO CLUE what most of these are so kind of afraid to close something there.

The External Hard drive is my F:\ drive .. I know it's some kind of a windows process holding the drive because there are times I'll pull a graphic off of the external and use in an email but I never see anything in the Process's list that relate to an email program, which btw are closed b... Read more

Answer:USB Western Digital External HD Help

I also get this issue from time to time. Too infrequently for me to worry about it.

So rather than spending a lot of time tracking it down I simply restart the computer. When you restart (or shut down) Windows closes all working processes and "ejects" the drive before powering off. It is a safe way to disconnect the external without risk of losing data or other negative effects as far as I know.

I have read that the issue can be due to Indexing - try turning indexing off for the external, issues with Libraries, thumbnails, and of course, poorly written software.There are a number of small programs you can download and install to explore Windows processes and turn them on and off if you want to try and track your issue down.

Hello folks!My first post, I just need some help on how to proceed.At I have a new (~3mo) Western Digital 320Gb HDD which I connect through a hard drive enclosure no my notebook. The hard drive enclosure gave me good service with a 120GB Seagate drive (still works), so I don?t question it?s ability to do its function. On the previous weekend I was reinstalling my Windows so all my data from the Win partition went on that drive. Pretty much everything I ever had was on that drive. Anyway I think I put in the WD hdd and turned on the enclosure, but some minutes later I figured that it didn?t work. I looked at the back of the enclosure, the ON light wasn?t on, I flipped it a couple of times to no result. Taking out the hdd, I noticed it was extremely hot, with case being around 45C. Seeing as the hdd is only enclosed on the top, and the bottom is somewhat exposed, with some circuit board and what not, unlike Seagate which are completely enclosed. I happened to touch either the circuitry or the motor or what not, and burned my finger (2nd degree burn with blisters an all). Anyway after some smokey smells I figured the hdd wasn?t working. Measuring the resistance across the 12V/5V and Gnd I measure something close to 0ohms, unlike the working Seagate which gives around 70. So I figure some circuitry or wiring is fused inside.Unfortunately not only did the hard drive had ?private? files (documents, resumes, and probably more sensitive data), but also confidential files from work. W... Read more

Answer:Fried (?) Western Digital HDD

Sounds quite dire, but I think I would try connecting it to a desktop computer as a slave drive and see whether it runs and whether you can retrieve files from it. Or, get one of these and try it: BYTECC BT-200 USB2.0 to IDE Cable With Power Adapter - RetailHowever, again, the likelihood of success seems quite small, based on your description of the severity of the over-heating.

Hello all, Western Digital has enjoyed participating in the forum of hp.com. It is with regret that we won?t be posting in the forum any longer; however we encourage our customers to visit our WD community at https://community.wd.com/ or via customer service at http://support.wdc.com/ for WD related questions. Sincerely yours.

I bought a WD MY BOOK Premium ES Edition HD to backup several of my office PCs and laptops. I was told at the store I purchased from, this would not be a problem. Specifically, I told them the application was to go to each PC and back up data. I was told that I could name each of the PCs(or hard drives) and back them up at will; by name. I have been looking all through this new drive and the support site for it and I have found no mention of this capability.So before I take it back to the store (BEst Buy) I would like to know if there is indeed any way to make this work for the above application. Does anyone have any advice for this or how they would backup several devices not all on a network.Thank you

Answer:Anyone have experience with Western Digital USB HD

You ran into a Salesman...But more details would be helpful...when you say backup how are you doing it? ?What software do you plan on using? ?How many machines ? ?What is the frequency of the backups ? ?

I'm having to replace my hard drive because of a mechanical failure and thought I'd take the opportunity to upgrade to a SATA 250GB drive. I now have the choice between these:Maxtor Maxline Plus 2 SATA 7,200rpm UDMA150 8MB CacheWestern Digital Caviar SATA UDMA150 7,200rpm 8MB Cache (JD)I'm looking for the best performance, although noise levels are also something I am taking into consideration.

I got a new WD Hard drive for my second system but for some reason my xp pro disk only sees 137 gigs after install.I did try to reformat and use the WD utility disk that came with it on a new partition but i get the same result after XP installs.Im sure since my XP pro does not have SP1 this is the issue but how do i make it see all 350 gigs of the Hard drive?

My Hard drive is the Western Digital SATA Caviar SE (WD3200AAJS)and my mobo on that system is a ASRock ALiveNF6G-VSTAfound here http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ALiveNF6G-VSTA

Model - WD essential 160gb.....THe blue WD icon which used to appear on the left handside of the drive name is also missing now.

1. When i "right-click - explore" or "double click" on the WD drive on my desktop i get this -

2. When i autoplay, then i get this -

I was able to browse the disk applying the 1st step itself, but now i have to autoplay everytime :huh:

Its been a week since i bought this drive.

Secondly, I have posted the query in ASK WD question section on www.westerndigital.com.for 1 day the status of my query was "unresolved", the next day it was solved, but i could not c the soulution, then i updated my question, then after 24 hrs again it showed 'solved', but i could not c it now also.I did not recieve any mail from them regarding the soulution.

I'm soooo irritated, they say the after sales service of WD is good, but their email service is worst!!!

I think they have set a timer that after 24 hrs all unresolved queries will show as solved just like that :S

So I have a WD6400A drive that has been with me for a bit...not worked hard or anything well to get to the point of the story. Tonight and lately ive been getting errors on start about possible corruption or bad sectors.Not thinking checked the box next to attempt to recover and repair bad sectors. No valid backup =/ theres nothing too terribly important except a lot of music and such but im still holding out on recovering some of it.

Ive already gotten the diagnostic from WD site and im running the extended test. 7 more hours to completion. The drive shows up fine in Devmngr but when I looked at it a bit ago in diskmgmt there was a chunk of approx 225GB of unallocated space??? I already know this thing is dying but im hoping to get the data off before I can it.

first simple smart test failed and the WD diagnostic that came with the drive wont even complete the scan without erroring out. Is it Puppy Linux time guys?

Questions:I need to know if I can simpy put this newest SATA II drive to any unsued SATA 2 cable?Do I have to remove or move around any drives?Is there a max supported drives for the motherboard?

Or anything anyone would like to add??

Answer:Need help installing new Western Digital 1 TB HDD

Oh yeah M8....Just install in ur puter and connect to any of the MOBO unused SATA connections, pwr and data cables.Check if HD is picked up in the BIOS durning start and or read in the device manager under disk driveYou need not move any of your drives around.....I would guess that you can connect 6 SATA drives internally and a bunch externally....luk dude....

Wow, this probably sounds really stupid, but I want to get two Raptors and RAID them. The only thing is... I don't want to have to reinstall everything all over again. Is there a way where I can move everything on this hard drive to the raptors so that I don't lose my information?

Answer:Western Digital Raptor

possible to hook up the HDD to a computer, transfer the files from ur current hdd onto that, and then ur happy
?

Hi,I am puttin gtogether a PC for a friend. All is good but for the hard drive. The Hard drive is a Western Digital 160Gb with 8mb cache. When this drive is installed all it does is make a loud spinning noise. Drive shows up in BIOS but when it comes to operation it doesn't exist. On loading WinXP, the system doesn't display any drive to partition. I removed the 160GB drive and installed another. XP installed OK. I tried adding the 160GB as a slave, the spinning noise returns and the computer now fails to load XP. I tried this with the 160Gb as a slave on another system and got the same result. I am looking to contact the vendor in the morning, but what I am asking is for your tech advice incase I am missing something. Is this drive a duffer?

Also, when installing a 160Gb hard drive, is it the same routine as installing, say, an 80Gb?

Staples are selling these at this reduced price from £99.99. Clearance offer ends 1 June 05.I have just bought one and installed on Win98SE box. All I had to do was download the drivers from Western Digital. All works perfectly.

Hello, i have a question about this drive click hereI want to know if the Iface has the firewire 400 &/Or 800 & if so what is the speed like on the 800.?Ive emailed the person selling this but he hasnt got back to me.? this was yesterday so i emailed him again today & still nothing.?Thankx for your time..

I wans't quite sure where to post this, but I am sure there are a large number of members that have prutchased drives between March 22, 2001 and FEBRUARY 15, 2006 and that they would be eligible to be a part of the suit. If they register and once the selttlement is approved they will be eligible to download a copy of EMC Dantz Retrospect Express version 7.5 for Windows users and version 6.1 for Mac users.

Candy said to post it here so here it is! ANd here is a link to the eligibility form:http://www.wdc.com/settlement/verify.asp